Australian Bills of Rights - LAWS8061
Faculty: Faculty of Law
School: Faculty of Law
Course Outline: See below
Campus: Kensington Campus
Career: Postgraduate
Units of Credit: 6
EFTSL: 0.12500 (more info)
Indicative Contact Hours per Week: 2
Enrolment Requirements:
Pre-requisite: Academic Program must be 9200 or 9210 or 9230 or 5740 or 9220 or 5750 or 9211 or 5211.
Excluded: JURD7461
CSS Contribution Charge: 1 (more info)
Tuition Fee: See Tuition Fee Schedule
Further Information: See Class Timetable
View course information for previous years.
Description
LLM Specialisations
Recommended Prior Knowledge
Course Objectives
- Understand fundamental concepts of human rights, different categories of rights, and international obligations in relation to domestic implementation of human rights treaty obligations;
- Understand the various approaches to protection of human rights without a bill of rights;
- Understand the various models of bills of rights in operation in comparable jurisdictions;
- Understand the history of debates about bills of rights in Australia, and the broader theoretical debates about the desirability, in particular their impact on the functioning of democratic institutions;
- Understand the origins, structure, content and impact of the ACT Human Rights Act 2004-and the Victorian Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities;
- Understand the current debates about and prospects of federal charter of rights and possible similar developments at the State and Territory level.
Main Topics
- Human rights - their origin, meaning and content, and competing models of the protection of human dignity and relationships;
- International obligations relating to the implementation of human rights at the national level and the different categories of rights (civil and political, economic, social and cultural, and third generation rights;
- The implementation and protection of human rights without a bill of rights;
- Models of bills of rights - judicially enforceable and other models, constitutionally entrenched and statutory bills of rights;
- The status of economic, social and cultural rights, the desirability and practicability of including them in constitutional or statutory charters of rights, and means of implementing and enforcing such rights;
- Debates about Bills of Rights in Australia and the development of modern Australian charters of rights;
- The ACT Human Rights Act 2004-and the Victorian Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities: origins, structure, content and impact;
- The prospects for a federal Charter of Rights and future developments at the State and Territory level.
Assessment
Final Essay 80%
Course Texts
Prescribed
- G Williams, A Charter of Rights for Australia (Sydney: UNSW Press, 2007)
- C Evans and S Evans, Australian Bills of Rights-The Law of the Victorian Charter and the ACT Human Rights Act (Chatswood, LexisNexis Butterworths, 2008)
- H Charlesworth,Writing in Rights (Sydney, UNSW Press 2002)
- A Pound and K Evans, An Annotated Guide to the Victorian Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities (Sydney, Thomson LawBookCo, 2008)
- A Byrnes, H Charlesworth, & G McKinnon, Bills of Rights in Australia: history, politics and law (UNSW Press, 2009)
Resources
Study Levels
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